The Secret Life of Pimmy Jalmer
by tigerlily25
Summary: There's a whole world outside the morgue walls that Palmer has yet to explore, but the simultaneous demands of med school rotation and NCIS might just prove to be his undoing. So many shoes, so little time.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** I miss Jimmy (there's just not enough of him in the so-far average Season 7), and apparently so does my muse. Since the show writers have completely failed to explain his absence, I've filled in my own gaps. First time trying to write a credible Palmer voice - comments and _constructive_ criticism welcomed. :)

**Disclaimer**: If they were mine, there would be much more Palmer screen time in canon. Clearly I own nothing except for the computer on which I looked up various medical facts, Palmer backstory and the _real_ meaning of piloerection.

**Summary**: _It's sort of exciting, being part of a real hospital that employs more medical staff than an elderly greying man with an honorary degree in the art of the segue_.

* * *

The blaring of Jimmy's alarm clock interrupts a rather nice dream about the filing clerk from the second floor. He's never asked her name, but she's got an enviable pair of authentic tan and chocolate coloured Chanel stilettos.

In his dream, he's just bribed someone from maintenance to disable the elevator so that he can follow her sh – uh, _coincidentally _walk a few steps behind her while _only_ looking at where he's putting his feet – up two flights of stairs. It's more than a little wrong on a variety of different levels, but it's his dream and so impropriety doesn't count.

Jimmy's in the middle of pretending that the slight increase in his respiration rate is to do with lack of fitness rather than the sight of her heels ascending the staircase when she opens her mouth. Instead of asking him to dinner as she has in previous dreams, she starts screeching and beeping in a very urgent and alarming way.

It's really not at all attractive.

Jimmy peers at the bright green numbers floating mere inches from his face. Through the fog of sleep he can just barely make out the numbers four and three, bookended by zeros, which normally means it's time to roll over and sink back into sleep for a few more hours. 0430 is far too early to be forcing your brain into a state of full consciousness, but such is life when you're a medical student who's unluckily been assigned to the early shift at the Georgetown University Hospital ER. Finding his glasses doesn't improve matters much, mainly because they seem to be inexplicably smeared with fingerprints. The evidence of clumsy hands makes it seem like he's watching the world through a haze that just happens to have distinctive whorls and ridges.

Night-time glasses-tampering intruder, or the result of an extra beer with last night's takeout Chinese?

Option B seems more likely somehow, but maybe he'll ask Abby to show him how to dust for prints, just in case. It could be a handy skill to have.

Nevertheless, it might be time to have his eyes tested again... when he has a moment of spare time between the demands of med school rotations and the demands of one Scottish medical examiner… or one silver-haired dogmatic Special Agent in Charge Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

It's no wonder he doesn't have time for a social life.

When rotations are finally over, he might even think about having the Lasik surgery that Abby took great pleasure in detailing step by step during one particularly slow day in the lab. The _eye-opening_ tutorial (he smiles to himself at the pun) came complete with a handmade scale model of the eye, removable corneal epithelium and all. He didn't want to ask what she used to actually _create_ the cornea, because he'd had red Jell-O for lunch and the outer layer of the eyeball looked suspiciously like it was created from some kind of gelatine-based substance.

Jimmy's stomach might be leaning more toward the cast-iron end of the scale since he started working for Dr Mallard, but it wasn't really good enough Jell-O to warrant a repeat tasting.

His backup alarm blares from across the other side of the room, reminding him in strident tones that it's now 0439 - well past time for him to be something other than horizontal.

Pushing back the hand-stitched quilt that his mother sent him the Christmas just gone (which of course he _only_ uses when the temperature drops to record icy lows because what fully grown and independent almost-medical-professional man sleeps under a star-patterned quilt as a matter of course?), Jimmy stretches and half-stumbles toward the bathroom for a hasty but reviving shower.

Thinking of his mother has proved a rather effective distraction from a certain just-woken state.

Still, it's always better to be safe than sorry. He doesn't dare look down as he ignores the hot water tap in favour of the cold and steps in, biting back a yelp (because yelping isn't at _all_ manly) as the cold water stings his flesh. The prescribed remedy has the desired result, though, and minutes later he's pulling on jeans and a clean shirt, the thoughts of shapely legs and those exquisitely crafted, hand-made pumps tapping up the stairs ahead of him all but –

Jimmy thinks Tony would be even _more_ proud to hear him cursing like a bawdy drunken sailor at the re-emergence of his, uh, _problem_, until he remembers that pride tends to goeth shortly before a fall – or endless ribbing from one Senior Field Agent, no matter how much clandestine secret-agenting went on between them during Gibbs' sabbatical in Mexico. Tony DiNozzo is almost as anal-retentive about details as Dr Mallard, though his area of specialisation tends more toward the dirty and embarrassing than the Scotsman's recitation of various tales, medical facts, and indicators of trauma.

Coming into work in a state of palpable excitement over shoes.

He's pretty sure he'd have to move to a different continent – Australia, perhaps, or somewhere else warm where the star quilt can stay firmly packed away in the closet, because in Australia surely he'd have time for a social life and his apartment would need to be ready just in case – to escape the fallout from that one.

For a moment he's almost glad that he's not around NCIS headquarters quite so much these days, but then he catches sight of a textbook on the procedures of psychological forensic analysis that he really should return to Ducky sometime soon.

Maybe he'll have time to swing by the Navy Yard after his shift ends, just for a few minutes. Drop off the book and leave before Dr Mallard feels the urge to share a story about his own days as a medical student, which Jimmy knows from experience might take an hour or more.

Drop off the book and leave. Got it.

Possibly via the bullpen, because he has a bone to pick with McGee on the rumour (courtesy of Abby) about Deep Six maybe being made into a movie. He's got a few alternate names to suggest for the character that is supposed to be him, none of which are in any way related to jocks who used to torment him in the locker room showers at his high school.

That would just be in poor taste.

Anyway, he wants to find out the new total of the betting pool on when exactly Tony and Ziva will either hook up in the elevator (highly uncomfortable on account of the steel walls and worn carpet, though not without a certain thrill of discovery… or so he's heard) or throw down in the middle of the bullpen.

At last count, it was up to triple figures, though he thinks he might raise his bet a little. His sources tell him that the two of them went to Paris recently on protection detail and yet only one room was charged to the company credit card.

This new information bears some top-secret and _very_ clandestine investigation, because he's well aware of Ziva's predilection for knives and not at all keen to have her perform unauthorised field surgery on his nether regions. He heard her threaten Tony with that once in his first year as Ducky's assistant, but he doesn't think she noticed him standing wide-eyed around the corner.

After all, the ex-Mossad agent had seemed genuinely puzzled as to why he stumbled over his words and avoided her gaze for weeks afterwards.

"Son," his father told him once after he'd heard about a certain elementary school corridor incident that no power on this earth will make Jimmy retell, "You gotta learn to pick your battles. You meet someone you know is going to whoop your scrawny ass, you just drop your eyes and back the heck out of there." He'd chewed thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek and studied his son.

"Maybe we should get you some karate lessons for your birthday. Toughen you up a bit."

It's no wonder the evidence techs have a habit of suddenly disappearing into the nether realms of the evidence garage when Officer…_ Probationary_ _Agent_ David strides out of the elevator. Maybe his father got that particular lesson from some kind of book on keeping sons safe from emasculation, and maybe _their_ fathers had the same book.

He's pretty sure nobody ever wrote a chapter titled 'How To Not Get Whumped By A Girl,' though, but then Ziva is a special case. Either way, though she isn't quite as scary these days - especially since coming back from Africa with dirt on her face and empty eyes – he's not about to take any chances.

Better to be safe than sorry, and he's willing to wager that she knows a whole slew of ways to make people apologise, even if Gibbs doesn't believe in such things.

Yeah, maybe he'll just stop by on his way home tonight. The agents over the other side of the divider might be interested in starting a new pool.

* * *

His Anatomy 101 professor once likened the human body to a well-oiled machine.

If all the wheels and gears and cogs are well-greased and working as they should, things run smoothly and with very little effort. Sometimes you don't even know that you're pushing the button or pulling the lever until the mechanism starts to wear under stress and becomes creaky and fragile, likely to grind to a halt at any minute.

The rumour among the first year students was that the man occasionally turned up to class rather well-oiled himself, if his shambling walk and the rosacea blooming vividly across his nose and cheeks was any indication.

He supposes in hindsight that making assumptions like that is similar to a first year Psych major being let loose on their family and friends with a copy of the DSM-IV and notes from three lectures on mental disorders. Suddenly Aunty Ethel's predilection for extreme mood swings turns into manic depression, when really it's just a manifestation of stress and anger because Uncle Bob took off with his secretary and left her to raise two kids under five.

Everyone's got a little bit of crazy in them if you look hard enough.

Anyway.

The cerebral cortex of the brain contains somewhere between 15-33 billion neurons, depending on the owner's gender and age. These neurons send their signal pulses (_action potentials_, Professor Bracewell would interject sharply, with his glasses slipping down his wide red nose) to the rest of the body, activating muscles and secreting chemicals that have specific effects depending on the situation.

A man is pointing a gun at you, his eyes shadowed and menacing beneath his hood.

Your heart pounds, your salivary glands seem to dry to dust, your sphincter tightens. Jimmy left that part out in all the subsequent retellings, because mentioning sphincters around Tony tends to lead to inappropriate jokes, and Jimmy's got quite enough inappropriate of his own.

Your vision narrows and greys, and you start to experience auditory exclusion – his internal Tony-voice grumbles impatiently and makes another crack about dumbing it down for the PE major – sorry, Agent DiNozzo. Temporary loss of hearing.

In his first weeks at NCIS, Dr Mallard had told him a story about…

Well, to be honest, the medical examiner had used the term _piloerection_ somewhere in the early part of the telling; which sufficiently distracted his young protégé from anything but the most vivid mental images, and so the specifics and the greater meaning are somewhat foggy, and… what was his point again?

Jimmy can't quite remember, except that the term was nothing to do with the increase of blood flow to certain parts of the male anatomy and everything to do with your hair standing on end.

But like everything else, that's beside the point.

He's careful to look at the floor of the elevator as the door opens and doctors and nurses pile into the open space in a tangle of coloured scrubs and white coats. There's a doctor here – he's not sure which one – that will tear apart any med student that dares to meet his eye, and now isn't the time for a grilling, especially when semi-naughty words are still at the forefront of his mind. Not that he'd ever show his amusement in such an environment.

After all, he's well beyond getting hung up on such juvenile – wow, black calfskin boots with a low heel, size six. Possibly Italian, most likely handmade and great for –

Thankfully, the elevator heralds the arrival at his destination with a sharply familiar 'ping,' which almost makes him expect to see the pumpkin-orange walls and the scrolling electronic board of the squad room, except when the doors finally open, the greenish-white glow of fluorescent hospital lighting spills into the lift cage. He leaves a trail of mumbled excuses in his wake as he pushes his way out, the lab results for the patient in Curtain Three clutched firmly in his hand.

It's sort of exciting, being part of a real hospital with more medical staff than an elderly grey-haired man with an honorary degree in the art of the segue. Even if the MO he's been assigned to seems far too young and flippant to be holding lives in his hands, and he doesn't have any stories that don't involve himself, the nursing staff and copious amounts of alcohol.

Even if sometimes during another twelve hour stint of treating flu, muscle strains and various insertion injuries (what it is about the hours between 2000 and dawn that makes people prone to experimenting with things that are just far too big to go where they're put, he can't figure out) Jimmy starts to understand why Dr Mallard likes working with deceased people, because they don't try to offer explanations like 'fell through a plate glass window and some of it got up my rear passage accidentally,' when their clothes are clearly intact and they won't meet his eyes.

Dead people have no secrets, and better yet, they don't lie.

* * *

_There will be one more part to come before (hopefully) the muse will allow me to get back to my other projects. Feedback welcomed and encouraged, as always. :)_


	2. Chapter 2

_Thanks to everyone who took the time to read and/or review the first chapter of this. :) Feedback is always appreciated._

* * *

Once upon a time, young Jimmy Palmer used to bring home stray animals he found in the neighbourhood. Cat or dog or bird, once – albeit briefly – even a carpet python, much to the horror of his mother who felt the same way about reptiles that he did about his father's suggestion that he played football.

The python lasted about as long in the house as he did at tryouts, but it didn't stop him from bringing home _other_ animals.

Like Mister Mistoffelees, the black polydactyl cat from the park who wouldn't eat anything but egg and anchovies, which made for rather interesting smells when he curled up beside you. Or Boner, the dopey-eyed mutt with a missing leg that didn't seem to stop him from mounting anything with two or more. Both long gone – one of feline leukaemia and the other after deciding to fixate on moving cars as the object of his misguided affection.

The thing about strays is that they're really just looking for someone to notice them, to take them in and give them somewhere they belong.

Looking around at the motley crew of assembled med students in the cafeteria, Jimmy wonders if this sentiment applies to more things than just amateur veterinary care. It's no Grey's Anatomy – or at least he hopes not, because he knows how often the linens in the on-call rooms get changed here and the thought of sleeping on secondhand sex sheets is enough to make the bite of pastrami on rye turn to dust in his mouth.

"Dr Jimbo!" a too-familiar voice calls heartily, and for a minute Palmer's not sure whether to be grateful for the distraction or annoyed that Brad Schiffer (fellow med student of the homo sapiens idiotus genesis) still doesn't get that his name is _Jimmy_, dammit.

And they're not really doctors, not yet, so really everything about the title rings false, like a game played by children who aren't sure yet how things work. They don't warn you about the long nights of little sleep, endless stitches and enemas, and being corralled by impatient nurses when you take more than four minutes to answer your pager.

(Which is probably for the best, because had he known what he was getting himself into, he might have spent the rest of his life hosing out pens and dodging claws and teeth)

"Brad, how are you?" he replies not-quite-enthusiastically, when what he really wants to say is '_I have three minutes left of my lunch break and I don't want to spend it listening to your self-important blather._' But that sounds entirely too much like something Ducky would say, if Ducky was capable of being that rude and _had_ specified lunch hours.

"Kickin' it sweet," Brad says, throwing himself into a chair in a way that makes Jimmy a little envious of the man's way of making every small movement into something that makes the nurses pay attention. And true to form, when he looks around him, no less than three are staring. "Got to watch a spleenectomy in the OR this morning," he adds with a Cheshire Cat grin. "And when I say watch, I don't just mean from the gallery. Dude totally had Gunther's and would've been in for a world of hurt if I – "

…if the next sentence out of his mouth is an attempt to take credit, Jimmy's going to channel his inner Agent Gibbs and shut this guy down, so help him…

" – hadn't remembered that talk you gave about diagnosing acquired enzyme disorders in the porphyrin pathways. Nice work, _Doctor_ Palmer." It seems genuine, even if Brad's helping himself to Jimmy's potato chips as he says it.

Maybe tuning in to Radio Gibbs can wait awhile.

"Guess all that frou-frou flashcarding and roleplay crap sunk in, huh?"

_Mister Palmer_, a voice says in his head just as he's about to tell Brad where he can stick his flashcards, _there are some battles from which you simply cannot emerge the victor. _

"Brad – " Jimmy starts in a strangled voice, watching his chips disappear into a place where – if rumours are to be believed – many nurses have looted and plundered before. The salty snack is just the latest thing to give up the fight. There's a suspicious-looking hair caught between Brad's central and lateral incisors.

You'd think a guy would at least take the time to floss afterward. Dental hygiene is everyone's friend.

And besides, you never know when you're going to end up cold and naked on a slab with a medical examiner picking pubic hair out of your teeth for closer examination.

Brad. Naked.

_Ugh_.

"You okay, man?"

"Sure," Jimmy says instead, figuring that even if the days when he took a voice recorder into the morgue to catch Ducky's every word are over, he still gives pretty good advice. Even if the fact that this advice comes via Jimmy's subconscious is a little – well, odd. "Break's over though, so I have to get back before – "

"Gruuuunts!"

The way Dr Samuels is looking at him as he says it, he's going to be stuck on SCUT for the rest of the day, and that's enough to make anyone wish that certain ex-assassins would put their innate scariness to good use.

"Before _that_ happens," Jimmy finishes with a sigh, wondering if Ziva does contract work.

* * *

"Jimmy!" Abby squeals as soon as he steps into the lab later that night, flinging herself at him in a way that would be almost hot in its exuberance if he wasn't just a tiny bit intimidated by the pigtailed forensic scientist. She's got that whole Gothic-and-coffin thing going on, after all. "Wow, I haven't seen you in the longest time! How's it going over at G-Town and have you saved anyone's life today and oh, Tony's going to be so mad that he wasn't around when you came by but he's out with Ziva at the Old Ebbitt Grill – "

An early dinner at one of the best restaurants in DC? Yep, he really needs to raise his bet.

" – following a lead – "

Or not.

" – but they should be back soon and have you been working out or something?" The statement is closely followed by hands squeezing his biceps and _holy Caf-Pow_ he's not sure whether to grin like a madman or to squirm under her touch like a virgin in a brothel. He settles for something in between, but from the way Abby raises an eyebrow it might have come out a little more leery than he intended.

Right, Jimmy, time to say something cool to salvage the situation.

"I, uh – " Anytime you want to jump in now, suave-alter-ego-Palmer, "Maybe it's all the enemas."

It's not only the complete opposite of suave, but also… well, it doesn't even make sense.

Abby blinks and steps back like she's made of ice and he's just told her he's on fire. Which clearly, judging by the black cloud of anti-suave floating around his person, he's not. "Kinky," she says with a measured look, and it's only then that he remembers the other thing that enemas can be used for.

At this rate, he'll never be eating anything ever again.

Abby thankfully keeps talking while he's trying not to groan out loud. "Anyway, whatever you've been, um, experimenting with in your spare time, I still missed you. I think Ducky does too, because he keeps dropping by the Labby to tell me stories about his own days in med school."

"Is Dr Mallard around?" Jimmy manages, grateful that Abby's dropped the kink-association thing. Then again, keeping her on any one topic for any length of time is a bit like trying to force a feather to float in a straight line (during a tornado), so it might not be about her desire to save him from further embarrassment. "I thought I'd bring this back."

He waves the textbook that's ostensibly his reason for stopping by – look at him playing Secret Agent Man, so stealthy with the cover story – and Abby's face goes from fond exasperation to dawning comprehension in a matter of seconds.

"Did you try the morgue?" It's just a few degrees shy of the wounded tone she uses on Gibbs sometimes when he tries to get her to follow the flight plan, and he's not quite sure whether to be pleased about that or not.

"Not yet," he says slowly, watching her. "Thought I'd come by here first. Just in case, y'know, he was in here… regaling."

The smile spreads across her face like the sun breaking through storm clouds. "Admit it, Jimmy. You're madly in love with me. Take me on the evidence table, you great hunk of medicine man you. " Teasing now.

"Who's doing what with who, now?" McGee says blankly from the doorway, looking like he's just walked in on his kid sister having sex with his drinking buddy. "Uh, hi, Palmer."

"Nobody's doing what with anyone other than themselves," Jimmy is quick to clarify, except that sounded a lot less embarrassing in his head.

"You're not wrong," Abby sighs wistfully, and McGee just stares at both of them (…deer in headlights, patient being told he's contracted genital herpes during a business trip that didn't include his wife…) for a good thirty seconds and then turns around and – there's really no other word for it – _flees_ the lab.

That'll smash previous Guinness World levels of awkward later, but in the now Jimmy and Abby are too busy laughing like loons to think beyond the next few side-splitting moments.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Abby gasps when she's able to breathe again, "But I sort of hope you flunk out and get your butt back here where it belongs."

It's the first time in days that Palmer hasn't felt like a stray.

* * *

"So I hear you're the reason why McPrude came back from Abby's lab looking like someone wiped his hard drive," a Cheshire-Cat-grinning Tony says later that night, balancing their drinks on a tray like he's been doing it his whole life. Which if what he's told Jimmy is to be believed, maybe he has.

"Left him speechless for a whole hour. You get an A for effort," he adds, handing over said A-for-apple(tini) with only a hint of smirk. They've long since learned not to question people's drink choices or frequency, ever since the infamous '08 Tequila Shooter Showdown that left Tony being practically carried into his apartment by Jimmy and a very self-satisfied (and somehow still upright) Ziva.

"So I said to Jimmy – "

Abby is obviously taking advantage of McGee's hasty trip to the men's room to fill Tony and Ziva in on what happened this afternoon, much to the amusement of both of them.

And speaking of which, he's pretty sure there's something going on there.

He wouldn't quite bet his own life on it, given what one of the pair used to do for a living, but he'd bet, say, _Brad's_. But at least Ziva doesn't look like she's ready to draw down on anyone that looks at her a bit oddly or for a second too long, which is a good thing in Jimmy's book. There's a certain appeal to seeing the hunter experiencing what it's like to be hunted in a 'high school bully gets what's coming to him' sense, but it's no fun to watch when it's someone you consider a friend.

The two of them keep looking at one another sneakily from the corner of their eyes, and every so often a leg bumps into Jimmy's under the table, almost as if whoever's limb it was got lost on the way to its intended destination. He and Michelle used to –

"World to Palmer," Ziva says somewhere just outside his headspace. When he looks up, she's looking at him curiously, while also pretending _not_ to look at Tony to see if he'll pick up her (probably) intentional error. Nobody who speaks that many languages can be _that_ dense when it comes to nuances. Whether Tony genuinely thinks that Ziva's grasp of idioms is that bad – or whether he just likes the idea that he can teach her something useful too much – is anyone's guess. It's just a thing they do, like the speaking without words thing, or the 'Ziva sneaking up on Tony' thing, or the pranking McGee thing.

Tony and Ziva have quite a lot of things, when he thinks about it.

Maybe all the little familiar games keep them from killing one another, because really, he can't see how they don't spend most of their time either arguing or –

"Palmer, if you're thinking what I think you're thinking, you better un-think it quick smart," Tony warns suddenly – he's like a movie-powered magnet for dirty thoughts – then blinks innocently when Ziva raises her eyebrows in his direction.

"And you say that _my_ English lacks sophistication," she says simply, and somehow even the rebuke (and Tony's answering retort) sounds a little like a prelude to other more horizontal… things. Or maybe Jimmy's just got sex on the brain tonight.

"Do I need to separate the two of you?" Gibbs interjects, and they all look up at him disbelievingly.

"Boss! Who's minding the basement?" Tony says a touch too loudly – how many beers did he have before Jimmy arrived? – and then yelps in feigned protest at the smacks he receives from Gibbs, Abby _and_ Ziva. Yelping never sounds that manly when Jimmy does it. Some people have all the luck.

"Morgue's been quiet," Gibbs says, nodding a greeting at Jimmy, which in Gibbs-speak means _we miss you banging around the place_. "You back soon?"

"Two weeks." _If I don't get chewed up and spat out by my idiot supervisor first_.

"Okay." _Can't wait to have you back_.

"Yeah." _I miss NCIS – well, mostly you guys – like a eunuch misses his… missing parts_.

Maybe there's something in the whole 'word conservation' idea after all.

"Ducky can't make it," Gibbs says in as gentle a tone as Gibbs ever says anything in, which is really not very gentle at all (but the effort is appreciated). "Got a call from the nursing home. Vanessa thinks the coat-rack is trying to strangle her while she sleeps."

"You know your life sucks when even the furniture has it in for you," Jimmy offers, because that's better than admitting that he's a little disappointed at the news, and then they're all staring at him like it's another day in the morgue and he's just commented on the size of the deceased's, uh, _hands_.

He doesn't mind too much. Familiar games are sometimes better than the truth, after all.

McGee slips into the booth beside Jimmy – without quite meeting his eye – and Abby snorts from the other side of the table, muttering something about taking matters into her own hands. McGee almost spits his mouthful of beer across the table, while Tony and Ziva pretend that they're not taking advantage of the distraction to steal sly glances at one another. Gibbs just rolls his eyes at the lot of them; like he's about to put them all in individual corners to think about what they've done wrong.

Jimmy can't help but grin, because sometime while he was away they've all stopped being awkward and touchy around one another and the cogs and gears and wheels of the team's machine are back to working how they used to. He definitely can't take credit for that, but he can sit back and enjoy the show.

Plus, he's going to rake in enough money in a certain pool to buy himself a new quilt.

* * *

_/end Palmer experiment. Hope you enjoyed, and if you did - or if you didn't, either is okay - and feel like feeding the feedback beast... ;)_


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